As Christopher Barnes, Boris A. Kats, and other scholars have pointed out, Pasternak led readers astray in his autobiographical essays, in the many autobiographical references found in his other works of prose as well as in his poetic works, and even in his voluminous correspondence. Despite his statement in the autobiographical essay
Okhrannaia gramota (1931; translated as "Safe Conduct," 1958) against seeing life as "the life of the poet," Pasternak recounted his own life from the point of view of a writer. He embellished, omitted, and transposed events for the sake of the narrative or a point he wished to make. He told his life through metaphors, and if the events did not serve his metaphors, he altered those events. Therefore, only because of the scrupulous attention of his biographers is one able now to reconstruct the events of his life.
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was born in Moscow on 29 January 1890 (10 February, new style). He was the first of four children born to artist Leonid Osipovich Pasternak and pianist Rozaliia Izidorovna (Kofman) Pasternak. Both parents were Jewish natives of Odessa, his father from a relatively poor family and his mother from a middle-class home.
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